Although it took two full quarters and a halftime before Carolina realized the team was in a make-or-break game, a win is a win is a win. This year in the NFC there are no style points because there is no style. But maybe the Panthers need to change theirs, such as it is.

The smash-mouth football John Fox dearly loves is not smashing, not close. The Panthers cannot run the ball, a needed component of mouth smashing. This means two very bad things. The Panthers either spot other teams leads, as they did to a very bad Tampa Bay offense last night, or the Panthers cannot hold leads late in the game, as three fourth-quarter fades show.

The Panthers do have Steve Smith, Keyshawn Johnson, and Jake Delhomme, however. And the same offensive line that has struggled with run blocking has been effective at pass blocking. This suggests that a pass-first offense might be the Panthers’ best chance to be effective over the next eight weeks. This would be a huge change for Foxy. Maybe too huge.

The normal post-game gab-fest on ESPN included a couple actual insights. One came from Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, who watched the game from the sidelines and pronounced Smith “uncoverable.” Young also noted that the Panthers’ play-action heavy passing game is not really helping Delhomme much because Carolina cannot run the ball. Much better, Young suggested, was to keep Delhomme facing the defense and taking short drops to get the ball to his playmakers.

But ESPN’s NFL insider Chris Mortensen essentially questioned Delhomme’s future in Carolina as Foxy and the front-office really do not trust Jake enough to put the game into his hands with a pass-happy attack. That seems a bit of reach — it is not like there are a dozen solid-gold, trustworthy QBs in the league right now. If you cannot trust Jake, you are pretty much saying you cannot trust an NFL QB in 2006.

Still, Fox and the Panthers face a choice. They can continue to bash away with a scheme that shows no signs of working or maybe tweak it a little to get the ball into places where Carolina can score some points — and keep scoring them.

Get it right and Carolina could be sitting at 7-4 in a couple weeks. Get it and wrong and a .500 season looms.